News

  On March 1, 2017, the new Cybersecurity Regulation to Protect Consumers and Financial Institutions proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo took effect . This first-in-the-nation piece of legislation aims at protecting consumer data and financial systems from cyber-attacks of terrorist organizations and other criminal enterprises. The Regulation requires banks, insurance companies, and other financial services institutions […]

On March 1, 2017, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) granted a Stay Petition in part, and ordered a “stay on an interim basis” of certain aspects of the 2016 order “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services” (the “Privacy Order”). The Privacy Order containing broadband privacy rules was published on November 2016. […]

According to the Irish Data Protection Authority (DPA) the hearing before the Irish High Court brought by the DPA against Facebook Ireland Ltd and Mr Schrems over EU-US data transfers will possibly take another additional week (or two addition weeks) to conclude. More information on the case is available here. According to the available sources (see […]

On December 21, 2016, Oracle asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider its decision and order “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services” (“Order”) published on November 2016. See here. At the beginning of 2017, several Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and cable associations filed Petitions for Reconsideration requesting the FCC to significantly […]

According to this source, in February 2017, an Italian judge for the preliminary investigations (usually referred as “GIP”, from Giudice per le Indagini Preliminari) ordered to obscure a website hosted in the US allegedly violating the privacy of an Italian citizen.  The latter had found that his personal data had been published on the website […]

You might have noticed that browsers have recently started to place symbols (colored padlocks) to grade the level of safety of the websites. Look at the web address: on the left, you will find symbols indicating the safety status. There are three types of symbols. Small green padlocks stand for secured websites, information or grey […]

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) developed Privacy Assistant, an app that uses machine learning to help users control the information that can be collected and used by mobile apps they install on their Android smartphones. It asks users a number of questions before recommending some possible changes to the permission settings. Privacy Assistant is available here. Follow […]

On February 6, 2017, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a district court judgement’s dismissal of two data breach class actions for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction:  Plaintiffs failed to establish a non-speculative, imminent injury-in-fact identity theft after a 2013 and 2014 data breach. This was a consolidated appeal of veterans against William Jennings Bryan […]

On September 30, 2016, a California federal court granted permission to serve process through Twitter on a foreign defendant. Plaintiff St. Francis Assisi (a non-profit corporation) sued the defendants Kuwait Finance House, Kuveyt-Turk Participation Bank Inc., and Hajjaj al-Ajmi (an individual) for damages and equitable relief arising from the defendants’ financing of the terrorist organization Islamic […]

On August 18, 2016, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) affirmed the administrative law judge’s (ALJ) ruling that Chipotle maintained an unlawful social media code of conduct that violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Chipotle fired an employee shortly after he tweeted several times on employees’ working conditions and wages. Chipotle social media policy included […]